


Fire and Ice

by LillianRose



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Angst, Cities, F/M, Gen, Hate Sex, Implied Underage, Introspection, Poverty, Religion, Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LillianRose/pseuds/LillianRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amongst all the bitter resentment between them there's something both can take from one another that satisfies an unexplainable, desperate craving born out of living in this Godforsaken place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire and Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Set two winters before the student uprising. Please feel free to point out any errors you might find.

Winter is harsh in the city.

Éponine remembers Montfermeil and the inn, where warmth surrounded her as much as laughter. Sometimes the memories seem so far away it's like trying to reach back into a long ago dream she can barely recall. She suspects those memories will become all but forgotten one day, when she's lived through one too many snowfalls.

It's cold in this boarding house. The walls are thin, the floor worn, the window panes cracked and broken. The inn in Montfermeil was hardly perfect - Éponine now old enough to understand the concept of distorting the past for one's pleasure when the present is unappealing - but it was warm, and she'd worn fine clothes and had spent happy hours being bounced her father's knee as he'd taught her the tricks of his trade.

For he had _had_ a trade then, as questionable as his some of his tricks had been. Today her father is simply a common thief, her mother the same, and she not much more than an urchin. The fine clothes are gone, replaced with tattered rags, and she's as filthy and unsightly as the city around her.

Soon Éponine will forget entirely what it ever felt to be pretty, and she'll not mind. Memories are as painful as they are comforting. More so, in fact. The older she grows the more bitter she becomes, as bitter as the all consuming frost which has covered everything everywhere for months.

Éponine shivers in the darkness and shamefully curls into the man sleeping deeply beside her.

Not someone to turn to for comfort, not ever, Montparnasse is strangely hot to the touch even on this painfully freezing night. A man who crawled up from the gutters and into Éponine's life not long after she came to the city, Montparnasse comes to her because he has the needs of every man, and Éponine - however grudgingly - welcomes him. Because she has her own needs, those a only another's warm body can fulfil. Montparnasse is not kind, or giving, or decent at all but he is warm, furnace hot, and amongst all the bitter resentment between them there's something both can take from one another that satisfies an unexplainable, desperate craving born out of living in this Godforsaken place.

She wonders, in these moments, if Montparnasse is indeed from the depths of Hell as all signs about him point towards, and despairs at how much closer to the devil she begins to feel herself with each day that passes here.

Closing her eyes, Éponine listens to fresh rain fall against the window and hopes it will melt the snow, along with the ever spreading ice around her heart.


End file.
